Sunday, June 2, 2013

Café Galleria

Address: 6055 S 900 E, Salt Lake City, UT 84121. 801.266.2225.Review: Sometimes you have to say what you mean and mean what you said, and do it quickly. This is one of those times. Here it goes: Café Galleria is a hot mess. We were intrigued by the fact it utilizes a wood-fire pizza oven (usually a good sign), and the promise of Neapolitan-style pizza (Napton pizza). Lies, all lies.

One of the advantages of using a wood-fire oven is it runs scalding hot. It should cook a pizza in approximately ninety seconds to two minutes, depending. So, it was disheartening when we were the only lunch patrons and we waited fifteen minutes for our pizzas. Not a good start.

I ordered the Siciliana, which included San Marzano tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, roasted bell peppers, Italian sausage, and red onions. I also asked for prosciutto cotto (my favorite pizza ingredient). Every element of the pizza was, just, sad. Good Napton pizza has a thin supple crust. This crust was dense, gummy, and tough. The tomatoes tasted like nothing. The mozzarella had no flavor, no character. The sausage was dense, overly spiced, and overly processed. The onions ring slices were all different sizes, and some were end pieces entirely took thick, big, and dry to be on a pizza. And, to top it off, the prosciutto cotto advertised wasn't actually prosciutto cotto. It was, instead, prosciutto crudo that had been cooked until it took on the consistency of shoe leather. And just in case you think I'm being picky about nomenclature, I'm not. Prosciutto cotto refers to a very specific type of meat that is entirely different than prosciutto crudo. No one who has ever eaten a pizza in Italy would pass off cooked prosciutto crudo as prosciutto cotto. This lack of product knowledge is indicative, and very likely one of the primary reasons the pizza tasted as it did.

My wife's margherita was more of the same: bland, tough, lifeless, bad.

Now, to be fair, this is a new location for Café Galleria. My understanding is it's a Midway restaurant which recently opened in the Salt Lake Valley location. I have read good things about the Midway location. Maybe they haven't worked out the kinks in Salt Lake yet. We can hope, I guess.